I said I would write once more when the print edition was in my hands. Today, October 19, 2026, the hardcover, Kindle, and Nook editions of Synchronicity in Grief: Reconstructing Meaning After Loss are out from Routledge. The ebook has been out since October 2, when it slipped onto Routledge’s site two weeks early, and the hardcover reached my house last Tuesday, six days ahead of the date. It has been so full of surprises at each stage of the publishing process, and I am so grateful everything happened on schedule.
The book is about the meaningful coincidences people describe in grief, a grandmother’s favorite bird at the window, the spouses’ favorite song at a moment too apt to explain away, and it takes those experiences seriously. The book grew from phenomenological interviews across birth parent, pet, grandparent, parent, and life partner loss, and it is written for grief counselors, therapists, chaplains, healthcare providers, bereavement researchers, and the bereaved themselves. Helen Marlo, PhD, wrote the foreword.
Where the book started
The research came first. In 2011 I defended a dissertation on synchronicity in bereavement at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, and years of further listening became an article in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology in 2025. The book happened because of an email. In the spring of 2025 I wrote to a Routledge editor to ask for copyediting work, and she asked instead whether I had a book to offer. I signed the contract that October. A dissertation, an article, and an email: that is the one-sentence version, and the long version is what the Dissertation to Publication series on the blog is for.
The making
From the day the manuscript went in, I wrote the production side as it happened, one post at a time. Here is the whole journey, in order.
- June 22 · I Just Sent My Book to Routledge — On Time
- June 25 · The First Email From My Publisher: Inside the Pre-Production Queries
- July 21 · What Editing Other People’s Books Taught Me About Writing My Own
- July 30 · The Copyeditor Caught a Name I’ve Read a Thousand Times
- August 3 · Thirty-One Queries in a Hundred Thousand Words
- August 4 · Copy Editing Phases and Scheduling the Work
- August 5 · My Book Has a Release Date
- August 6 · What an Author Query Actually Looks Like
- August 13 · You Are Allowed to Ask the Copyeditor a Question Back
- August 18 · How My Book Came to Be
- August 19 · The Ten Words That Make Your Book Findable
- August 24 · Page Proofs and an Index
- September 3 · The Last Thing I Will Ever Do to This Book
- September 9 · Pre-Orders Open
- October 2 · My Book Is Out, a Little Earlier Than I Expected
- October 6 · The Strange Month Between Pre-Order and Publication
What it took
The numbers in those titles are the honest ones. A hundred thousand words, and thirty-one queries from the copyeditor across all of them. Files returned 4 days before the deadline. An index built by hand over 30 hours, and then the typeset index back for one last look on September 10, which was the actual last task. And the timespan, which I most want other publishing scholars to see: an email in the spring of 2025, a contract that October, a manuscript delivered on time in June 2026, and a book in October 2026. A year from signature to shelf is possible, with a publisher that keeps its schedule and an author who keeps hers.
Why it matters
The book is built from qualitative, existential phenomenological psychology research. Bereaved people shared with me experiences they had been talked out of by other people before, some of them more than once, and trusted me to recount them carefully. My deepest thanks go to them first. Then to the village that made the manuscript a book: the acquisitions editor who asked a generous question, the copyeditor with thirty-one careful author queries, the production editor who closed the last loop, a dear mentor who wrote the foreword, and booksellers all over the world. I am one small part of this village.
Where to get it
Hardcover and Kindle at Amazon; hardcover and Nook at Barnes & Noble; the ebook at Routledge and Apple Books; Bookshop.org if you would rather support an independent bookstore; and a list of sellers outside the US. If you work or study at a university, your library can add it through Taylor & Francis eBooks. A reader asked their library last week, and the library bought it right away. Every edition, every bookseller, and the ISBNs for your librarian are on the book page.
What’s next
This is the last post in the production journey, but not the last about the book. The monthly From the Editing Desk continues, and the Dissertation to Publication series began on the blog on October 9, because the path this book took, from a dissertation to an article to a book, is the work I now do with other scholars. If you have a dissertation that could become one of those, that is the place to start.
Synchronicity in Grief: Reconstructing Meaning After Loss (Hill, 2027) is in the world now. May it help bereaved people find meaning in those little moments or big moments of coincidence that help us remain connected with those we love who have died.
The patience of publishing.
Warmly,
~Jennifer